Source: I received a copy of this book from the publishers through Net Galley for an honest review.

Book Synopsis:

A government special agent known only as the Signalman gets off a train on a stunningly hot morning in Winslow, Arizona. Later that day he meets a woman in a diner to exchange information about an event that happened a week earlier for which neither has an explanation, but which haunts the Signalman.

In a ranch house near the shore of the Salton Sea a cult leader gathers up the weak and susceptible—the Children of the Next Level—and offers them something to believe in and a chance for transcendence. The future is coming and they will help to usher it in.

A day after the events at the ranch house which disturbed the Signalman so deeply that he and his government sought out help from ‘other’ sources, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory abruptly loses contact with NASA’s interplanetary probe New Horizons. Something out beyond the orbit of Pluto has made contact.

And a woman floating outside of time looks to the future and the past for answers to what can save humanity.

My Review:

Well, that was weird and I’m not quite sure what I just read. It was science fiction that read more like a horror story (of which I usually steer clear of, not a fan of scary). It almost felt like an episode of the X-Files or the Twilight Zone. The story is short, however, which encouraged me to press on as I figured the book would need to get to the point pretty quick. So stick with it as after three chapters I had a pretty good idea where the author was taking us.

The story jumps back and forth in time but the author is helpful in sharing the date of the current action at the beginning of each chapter. Being a short story that is quite mysterious there isn’t much time to become invested in any character but I did find myself drawn to Signalman and could see a series of these short stories that feature him handling these strange cases.

I’m not quite sure what or if there was a point to the story, besides being entertaining, as the story is almost as mysterious at the end as it is at the beginning. This is a book that holds its plot close as it slowly discloses what is going on. It is one of those books that lingers in your mind as you try to figure out what the heck you just read.